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Accounting For The Phonetic Shape of Pronouns in English Talk-In-Interaction

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This paper investigates the strong and weak forms of pronouns in English conversational data. Previous research has analyzed the phonetic variability of pronouns as being either phonologically strong or weak. However, this paper demonstrates that pronoun forms pattern systematically based on their sequential placement and interactional function in conversation. Through detailed analysis of chunks like "I think", "I mean", and "I know", the author shows how pronoun variability is tied to moments of interactional delicacy.

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Accounting For The Phonetic Shape of Pronouns in English Talk-In-Interaction

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AnouMalie
18 views2 pages
This paper investigates the strong and weak forms of pronouns in English conversational data. Previous research has analyzed the phonetic variability of pronouns as being either phonologically strong or weak. However, this paper demonstrates that pronoun forms pattern systematically based on their sequential placement and interactional function in conversation. Through detailed analysis of chunks like "I think", "I mean", and "I know", the author shows how pronoun variability is tied to moments of interactional delicacy.

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Ilc Abstract

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This paper investigates the strong and weak forms of pronouns in English conversational data. Previous research has analyzed the phonetic variability of pronouns as being either phonologically strong or weak. However, this paper demonstrates that pronoun forms pattern systematically based on their sequential placement and interactional function in conversation. Through detailed analysis of chunks like "I think", "I mean", and "I know", the author shows how pronoun variability is tied to moments of interactional delicacy.

Copyright:

© All Rights Reserved
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as doc, pdf, or txt
18 views2 pages

Accounting For The Phonetic Shape of Pronouns in English Talk-In-Interaction

Uploaded by

AnouMalie
This paper investigates the strong and weak forms of pronouns in English conversational data. Previous research has analyzed the phonetic variability of pronouns as being either phonologically strong or weak. However, this paper demonstrates that pronoun forms pattern systematically based on their sequential placement and interactional function in conversation. Through detailed analysis of chunks like "I think", "I mean", and "I know", the author shows how pronoun variability is tied to moments of interactional delicacy.

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Accounting for the Phonetic Shape of pronouns in English talk-in-interaction

Abstract for ILC (2002)

In English, certain grammatical items such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns etc, can have
variable phonetic shapes. These variable shapes have traditionally been regarded as being either
phonologically “strong” i.e. stressed and “unreduced” or phonologically “weak” i.e. unstressed and
“reduced” (Jones 1960). Accounting for this variability has posed a great challenge to Linguists.

Selkirk (1984) attempted to explain the distribution of strong and weak forms by appealing to both the
prosodic and syntactic structure. She argues that strong forms are metrically strong and are assigned the
status of Prosodic Word. Consequently, they can occur in different syntactic locations to weak forms
e.g. phrase finally (Selkirk 1995). However, as her analysis is based on intuited data it does not always
hold when applied to conversational data. Others (e.g. Zwicky 1977) have been concerned with
establishing the phonological rules and processes e.g. reduction, deletion etc through which the variable
forms in talk are derived. Some regard this variability as a phonetic consequence of articulatory factors
connected to the style or the rate of the speech (Nolan 1996).

This paper investigates strong and weak pronouns in English talk-in-interaction. I show that the strong
and weak forms pattern in systematically different ways. I demonstrate how at least some of the
variable forms can be accounted for by their sequential placement and interactional function in talk.

The methodology of interactional linguistics is used to unpick some of the detailed phonetics and
interactional patterns associated with particular chunks of talk such as I think, I mean and I know.
Previous work (e.g. Kohler 1999, Ogden 1999) has demonstrated how analyses of particular pieces,
such as pronoun + verb, can unearth interesting (i) articulatory fusions and possible lexicalisations and
(ii) articulatory components, or prosodies in the Firthian sense (Firth 1948), which are not attached to
specific “segments”. Analyses of the pronoun + verb chunks reveal systematic phonetic phenomena
regarding the whole piece, its structural distribution and its interactional function.

I show how the grammatical function, the phonetic variability and the phonological structure of
pronoun + verb pieces is tied in complex ways to the interaction. One possibility explored is that strong
forms of pronouns may used by participants to handle moments of interactional delicacy such as
upcoming dispreferred negative assessments. This provides evidence for the postulation that the level
of interaction may, at least in part, constrain the phonetic and phonological organisation of talk.

References

Firth, J. R. (1948). Sounds and Prosodies. Transactions of the Philological Society. In Firth, J. R (ed).
Papers in Linguistics: 1934-1951. Oxford University Press: London. 121-138.
Jones, D. (1960). An Outline of English Phonetics (Ninth Edition). W. Hefer & Sons Ltd: Cambridge.
Kohler, K. J. (1999). Articulatory prosodies in German reduced speech. ICPhS XIV, San Francisco,
89-92.
Nolan, F. (1996). Overview of English Connected Speech Processes (CSPs). In Arbeitsberichte, Institut
für Phonetik und Digitale Sprachverarbeitung 31, Universität Kiel, 15-26.
Ogden, R.A. (1999). A declarative account of strong and weak auxiliaries in English. Phonology 16,
55-92.
Selkirk, E. O. (1984). Phonology and Syntax: The Relation between Sound and Structure. MIT Press:
Cambridge.
Selkirk, E. O. (1995). The prosodic structure of function words. University of Massachusetts
Occasional Papers 19: 439-469.
Zwicky, A. M. (1977). On Clitics. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.

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